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I finally began to tackle a kit, which is on my todo list for some time now.

It will be the F-16AM of the Solo Display Team of the Netherland Air Force in its stunning orange/black livery.
I will build it as an in-flight model, using the Syhart decals.

As I didn't want to wrestle with the Kinetic kit, I decide to go the route of using the Tamiya kit and the Kasl Hobby conversion kit, which includes a rear fuselage sectian and a tail apropriate for an AM Viper.

Further aftermarket accessoirs I intend to use:

Tamiya stiffener plates and probes

Aires resin nozzle

Royal Resin nose cone (I am not sure yet, If I really use it or go just with the kit parts.)

KT Model Resin Works Smokewinders

I started with the most intimidating step: the surgery of the upper fuselage, but everything went well:

And here, the rear parts in their place on the lower fuselage:

The fit is quite good, but of course a little bit of filler is still required. The shape and dimension match perfectly, panel line appearance fits to the Tamiya kit.

The fuselage parts are not glued together yet, I will do this when I attach the upper fuselage to the lower fuselage, to avoid any alignment issues.

Cheers,
Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

Thank you.
Yes, a B would open up most of the variants. It is really a pity.

Work continues in small steps.

here is another picture of a dry fit, with the forward fuselage attached and dry fitted to the lower fuselage:

The next step was the air intake. to get a seamless intake, I used the proven method of mating the forward and rear parts of the intake, getting rid of the lateral seams, and then gluing upper and lower halfes together.

I glued a piece of styrene to the rear wall of the front wheel well on which the gear door will rest.

Here a dry fit to see if it will work:

Yep, looks good, even without glue.

Its hard to take pictures of white plastic ;-)

Cheers,
Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

I made some slow but steady progress over the last weeks: Capt. Stefan "Stitch" Hutton - or at least the model of him - is ready to board the plane:

It is the Thunderbirds pilot figure with the standard helmet. The helmet was sanded smooth.

The helmet is painted using Mr. Paint colors specifically for this jet, and the markings are self printed decals, as are the shoulder patches

The original helmet has a pinstriped lion on the orange part, but that is too delicate to replicate.

I also painted the intake and the lower fuselage in light metallic orange, using the two layered Mr. Paint MRP-207.

The first layer is more ore less the orange base color, the second layer adds the metallic effect. White is the perfect base color for these paint.

Cheers,
Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

The black areas on the underside of the forward fuselage were painted, and then the intake was attached and the gear doors were glued in. Again, everything fit without hassle.

Next I glued in the cockpit and attached the upper fuselage. In the first step just the kit parts without the resin spine.

This allows me to check the position of the in-flight mounting socket.

The plane will be mounted on a 15mm acrylic rod, which will be inserted through the exhaust. 15mm is also the inner diameter on the smallest piece of the Aires exhaust.

If I just mounted the rod into the resin exhaust, it would not be very stable. I therfore glued a 15mm copper fitting to the back of the compressor fan with epoxy. It will carry the weight of the aircraft, the exhaust only acts as a guide.

When the epoxy was dry, I glued in the conversion spine. It was necessary to remove any excess epoxy from the outside of the fan part, since the resin part rests upon it.

Only a small gap on the back remains to be filled. The resin part shapewise fits perfectly, if some care is used during the gluing process.

Cheers,
Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

Apart from the added stiffener plates, the RWR antennas on the leading edge of the wings were removed.
Also, the inboard LEF hinges lost one finger. On the underside, the forward chaff/flare buckets were filled.

Another thing is the vertical tail.

Although marketed as a tail for an AM, the tip is in fact the tip of a C tail.
For a Netherlands aircraft, RAM panels and sensors have to be added to the parabrake housing.

Cheers,
Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

I removed the position light on top and reshaped the tip to match an A(M) tail. I then added the bas for the position lieght from the kit part.

For the RAM(?) panels on the parabrake, I traced the outline on a piece of masking tape, removed it, scanned it and made some fine adjustmenst in a graphics software. I printed this out on self adhesive paper, cut it with a x-acto blade and put it in place. Afterwards, I made the sesnors from round styrene rods.

The static wicks are from Master Models (I know, the middle one is missing)
The position light itself will be cut from clear plastic, since the kit parts have the wrong shape for an AM.

I Then glued the reinforment plates in front of the tail, added the last tiny pieces and masked the canopy to be ready for some paint.
I still have to cut small groves into the sockets for the static wicks so that the brass ones can be fitted.

I also painted the exhaust, using Tamiya xf-66 for the grey parts of the petals, and various Alclads for the rest:

Also, there should be the NO PUSH stencils on the petals. Does anybody know which size they should be?

And finally, I decided to use the kit nose (with the metal pitot tube). After I painted it flat black, I carefully scraped the lightning stripes free from color.

So, the only thing left to do are the static wicks, then it is ready for the paint booth.

Cheers,

Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

For the Mr. Paint orange, the aircraft should be primed in white, since it isn't very opaque, and you would need very thick layers to cover up color variations or darker colors.

After the primer was cured, I sprayed the first layer, the light orange without any metallic particles (on the rear near the exhaust I already sprayed a little bit of the metallic top coat) :

Cheers,

Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

The darker orange fits perfectly to the color of the Syhart decals. I sprayed the arresting hook area and the inside of the ventral strakes in this color.

After that, I carfully masked the orange parts to paint the black parts. In most areas, the boundaries of the black areas are marked by decals, so the outline don't have to be masked exactly.

The grey IFF antenas have been painted by brush.
Now it is ready to receive the black decals.

Cheers,
Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

The black trims and a clearcoat are on. The aircraft is now ready for the dark orange lions:

Cheers,
Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

This was by no means easy, as the decals are very fragile and need a lot of decal softener to conform to the surface details. Also, they seem to be not specifically sized to the Tamiya kit. But thankfully, there is enough sheet decal material in the darker orange to compensate for too small areas. The only issue is that the decals are not completely opaque, so if they overlap, the overlap areas are darker than the rest.

Now a gloss clearcoat will follow.

Cheers,

Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

Some other projects in the last weeks prevented me from working on any models.

In the meanwhile, the gloss coat over the decals had anough time to dry, so I could do some detail painting, like the metal doors and mesh areas on the belly.

The position light on top of the vertical tail was made from a clear sprue. For the A, it is more rectangular than for the C.

The smokewinders were fitted with little ram air intakes on the bottom between the fins.

Also, I did coat the black areas with a semi-gloss coat.

I would have finished the aircraft yesterday, but when attaching the jet nozzle, I messed up with the CA glue. The glue settled while the nozzle wasn't pushed in the whole way. Luckily, during the process of extracting the nozzle, only the painting of the exhaust got messed up, the airframe itself remined undamaged.

This is a review of how it will be mounted. The base in the picture is just a provisional base, and also the length of the acrylic rod probably will be shorter. I will determine the final length once the exhaust is repainted and fitted.

Cheers,
Markus

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.

__________________
Most of my pictures are/were hosted on Photobucket. Since Photobucket turned off 3rd party hosting, many of them can't be viewed anymore.
I don't have the time to repair all of my threads, but I will repair single threads on request. Simply write a PM.